It's often believed that creative ideas come to you when you are unprepared. Let's say while you are zoning out in the shower or working up a sweat on the treadmill. Which is why Bihar IPS officer Vinay Tiwari makes it a point to keep his phone handy. "Sometimes, when you get that sudden surge of inspiration, you need to jot it down because thoughts easily slip through the cracks of memory." His digital notepad is full of hurriedly typed, "random" thoughts.

Earlier this month, the police officer got an unexpected chance to sit back and revisit these musings. On August 2, he arrived in Mumbai to probe the case of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput's alleged suicide as head of the Bihar Police's Special Investigation Team after the actor's father registered an FIR in Patna. But Tiwari was forced into quarantine by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation in accordance with the guidelines that govern travellers arriving into the city. In response, the Bihar Police wrote to the BMC arguing that Tiwari should be exempt from home quarantine to facilitate his return to his home state to resume duty. After much controversy in the press, and the CBI taking over the investigation on August 7, Tiwari and his team of four policemen returned to Patna.